Anna Meredith is back! We’re huge fans of the electronic contemporary composer, and following 2019’s Mercury Prize-nominated FIBS, we’re excited to hear that she has just announced the release of her third album. Entitled Darling, the record arrives on February 12th through Mercury KX. Across its eleven tracks, she continues to push her wonderfully unpredictable blend of electronic music, contemporary classical, art pop and experimental rock, this time with even more instruments than her previous albums, including a 47-year-old cassette tape.
The album announcement arrives alongside ‘Dusky’, a beast of a track clocking in at nearly seven minutes. Meredith describes it as “4 tracks in 1”, with each section having its own identity, and constantly shifting shape before eventually crashing into a gloriously heavy electric guitar outro courtesy of Jack Ross. Speaking about the track, she says:
“I’m so proud of ‘Dusky’ and the ambition and manifesto it sets out for the album. In many ways it’s 4 tracks in one, with each stage of the journey inhabiting its own identity, whilst setting up the reveals and rug pulls of the sections to follow. It’s got loads of the things that I love writing – polyrhythms, parpy brass, metric modulations, waily synths. A lot of the music was written around my desire to build towards a heavy chugging metal electric guitar riff for my amazing guitarist Jack Ross, and to work out the best way to arrive at that moment so that it feels both entirely right and utterly unexpected. It makes me whoop with the joy and silliness of it every time.”
‘Dusky’ comes with an accompanying video by longtime collaborator Ewan Jones Morris, who has created the whole thing by hand using plasticine, cut-outs and puppets. He had this to say about it:
“Dusky is a track that really demands your attention (this is of course true of all of Anna’s music!) but I think especially so with Dusky. In an ideal world I’d make a 7 minute theatrical production, with a legion of masked performers and some over the top set design that completely transforms every couple of minutes. This is the old man in a garden shed version of that. Obviously it’s all thrown together in a computer but every element was handmade from plasticine or cut out with a scalpel and stuck on a stick and puppeteered by me. I’m hoping people actually making stuff with their hands still garners some attention. (Insert comment about creativity, AI and state of the world).
The curtains and doors came from a chat with Anna, the idea that Dusky is a journey through portals into increasingly unexpected rooms. Just when you think you’ve reached the climax, you find yourself somewhere new. I added in the faces probably because I was visibly terrified of making a 7 minute visual accompaniment to an increasingly impossible track. I liked the idea of a different emotional state triggered by each section of the track.
The end result is this theatrical game of peekaboo, hopefully fun and continuously surprising, and in the spirit of Dusky.”
Bonkers and exhilarating, ‘Dusky’ leaves us itching to hear more. Watch the video below.
